My Daughter's 3rd Birthday

A few months before my kids' birthdays they begin planning how they think things should go for their party. Actually, my 6 year old starts planning his right after his guests start leaving from that year's festivities! This year my daughter has been into very girly, pink stuff, and her favorite story is Pinkalicious. Because of the brightly colored pink cupcakes in the story she has wanted a "peeenk cake" for months now, and it was easy to find pink princess items to round out her party.

I made the cakes a week ago and froze the layers. I've had houseguests the past week and knew time would be short. Most sane people would take that as a cue to pick up something from a local bakery, or at the very least make a simple design, but...well, I wanted to experiment with tiers and have a little fun with it! Frozen unfrosted cake, if wrapped tightly, keeps very well, and it makes the icing glide on so smoothly. I like the texture of cake that's been frozen better than fresh too; it seems to be more moist and the flavors have blended better also.

The bottom 9-inch round was a chocolate layer cake, and the top 6-inch was a white chocolate-flavored layer cake. I used a raspberry liqueur syrup on the layers to make them extra moist while the cakes were still warm from the oven (before being cut and frozen). Yesterday I filled each with white chocolate buttercream and fresh raspberries, did a thick crumbcoat of the icing also, and covered the whole concoction in marshmallow fondant sprinkled with sparkly luster dust. This time I made the marshmallows from scratch.

On that note, the marshmallows were easier to work with a gave a better consistency for rolling out when the fondant was finished than the store-bought variety. Yes, it was more work to make the marshmallow, but they're fairly easy. The end result was worth it!

My only problem was with the royal icing that cake decorating books recommend for "gluing" the layers together and for piping along the bottom of the cakes. I hated it! It was glossy (the fondant was matte), it was difficult to work with compared to buttercream, and I ended up scraping it off and using buttercream instead.

Because I was expecting a lot of guests, and because the Pinkalicious book has pink cupcakes featured in it, I also make a dozen of the smaller treats. I used a basic yellow cake recipe and topped it with fluffy standard buttercream, colored pink of course! I thought I had white sprinkles, but they were actually lavender, so I made teeny little balls out of the leftover white fondant to sprinkle over the top, and also gave a slight dusting of pink luster dust for shimmer.

I think it turned out well, for my first attempt at a tiered cake (and my second attempt at fondant). It was definitely worth the time and effort when I woke my little princess up from her nap and brought her in to see the spread. She was very excited to try her "peeenk cake!"